Current news concerning Oaxaca, Mexico as well as Mark's thoughts, for what they are worth, on the world's most pressing issues of the day.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Oaxaca, Mexico: APPO leader Flavio Sosa CAPTURED!

This is a repeat post due to problems with Blogger or my connection, I don't know which. I would dump this post but already commenters have posted comments and I don't want to lose them. The updated post is below. Sorry about the confusion.

That's dumb. I'm going to go to work on this and get the updates moved up here.

At 8:30 pm tonight, according to TV Azteca, Flavio Sosa, one of his brothers, Horacio, and two top APPO officials were captured in Mexico City. Sosa was living in San Bartolo Coyotepec, just south of Oaxaca (the big barro negro market). The PFP got a warrant to search his house where they discovered an address in Mexico City. The PGR (federal Attorney General) raided that address tonight and they got him.

He is currently being processed by the PGR, being charged with a host of crimes, from arson to kidnapping to riot to incitement to riot, and will be immediately transferred to the federal maximum security prison at Almaloya de Juarez (formerly la Palma).

Very few details but we think that Sosa was in a meeting planning another assault on the PFP in Oaxaca for this coming Saturday. There had been a lot of chatter about this all day but I didn't report it because I took it for what it was, just chatter. APPO doesn't have enough hard core thugs left to assault a Dairy Queen, let alone take on the PFP again.

More details as they become available.

UPDATE I:

Flavio Sosa, leader of APPO, in custody

Captured along with Flavio and Horacio Sosa were Marcelino Coache and Ignacio Garnica. Flavio Sosa is the only one, at least at this time, destined for the maximum security prison at Almaloya. Horacio is headed for the federal prison in Nayarit where some 140 other Oaxacan prisoners are being held. However, Coache and Garnica have presented a problem. Everyone knows that there are arrest warrants outstanding against them but no one seems to be able to find the warrants. Mexico City authorities are going to hold them while Oaxacan authorities search for the warrants. If Oaxacan authorities can't come up with the warrants in 24 hours, they'll have to be released. Keystone Cops or what?

Teachers have responded immediately against the military entering schools, backed by parents who in some cases have chased military out of classrooms with rocks. Kids are of course frightened, crying, running. The 3rd article of the Mexican Constitution guarantees education for all. Military, uniformed and otherwise have entered over 10 schools.

No such thing has ever happened, This is a bald faced lie and anyone who believes it is an utter fool. Anyone who watched what the PFP did to a mob of heavily armed thugs two Saturdays ago would be a moron to believe that a handful of rock throwing teachers could run the PFP out of a school. The PFP has entered no schools. Nor have any police forces. There have been some arrests at school entrances when teachers arrived (long before the kiddies) on oustanding warrants for the usual riot, arson, assaults, etc. That's what the teachers are marching to protest. They actually thought they were all going to walk away from a city and state they have left in shambles with no reckoning whatsoever. Think again, maestros.

UPDATE III: According to Reforma, the prison to which both Sosas will be held is Altaplano, not Almaloya. We've got some conflicting news reports. Also according to Reforma, the group was captured in a taxi in Colonia Roma (very ritzy) on their way back from a press conference. If you look at the photo, however, it seems like there are too many for a taxi. Not that it matters too much.

And then there's this: I thought that the name "Garnica" rang a bell. There is a woman Erendira Garnica Aragon who is heavy into APPO. But this name, "Gatica," rings more of a bell. He's the guy from CIPO - RFM who the Anglican priestess Emilie Smith helped to get into Canada as a political refugee. Emilie Smith, as you may remember, is here in Oaxaca, in hiding, encouraging indigenous people to go out in the streets and get shot. She posts plaintive reports from Oaxaca where one minute she is saving a poor abandoned kitten's life and the next minute she reports on "mass rapes". What a hoot. The cascade of lies coming from these people is almost beyond belief.

They report: "522 now imprisoned, 200 arrested of which 150 are teachers, 100 disappeared. 14 others were arrested on Dec.1. Some of the arrests continue to be completely arbitrary." Hmm. 522 imprisoned but only 200 arrested. Does that mean that 322 turned themselves in? No, I think that means that these morons are tripping all over themselves to present some made up bad news and got caught telling the truth, all in the same sentence. 200 arrested and imprisoned sounds much more like it to me.

A group photo of the detained

Flavio Sosa with not so much to say, now.

UDATE IV: One of the few remaining APPO spokespersons not in jail, Florentino López, announced that APPO would undertake a "series of national and international mobilizations" in response to the arrests of their leadership. APPO doesn't have much more than a half a dozen active followers left, so they're going to be spread mighty thin. He accused the 4 day-old Calderón government of "treachery" for the arrests, saying that the government was "two-faced" for agreeing to sit down at the negotiating table but then arresting everybody.

He says that APPO will march in protest on December 10 (if enough marchers have been released from prison by that date.)

I think he misunderstands the government's position here. The government doesn't have two faces, it wants to see new faces. The government was weary of all of the old APPO faces and what better way to assure new faces at the negotiating table than to throw all of the old faces in jail. Works for me.

And now sallies forth Enrique Rueda Pacheco, leader of the teachers union, to "deplore" the arrests of the APPO leadership. However, Rueda Pacheco, between whom no love was lost with Flavio Sosa, announced that his deploring doesn't include either marches or another work stoppage. The teachers union will just deplore. Rueda Pacheco said the teachers union will participate in APPO's march scheduled for December 10th, with 1 of its 148 leadership sections. Generous.

Note: ". . . between whom no love was lost with Flavio Sosa . . ."? I'm not real sure about the construction of that prepositional phrase. If the first word has to be the preposition and the last word has to be the object, it doesn't work. But I'm too sleepy to fix it right now. Upon reflection, I could call "no love was lost with Flavio Sosa" a complementary phrase modifying the object of the preposition, "whom", but, well . . . damn.